Dear Esther

Book excerpt: "Deeply moving, brilliant, and powerful." U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In October 1942, Esther Terner Raab and 300 other Jews escaped from Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in eastern Poland. It was the biggest escape of World War II and the subject of Richard Rashke's book, Escape from Sobibor. The book, and the movie based on it, brought Esther many invitations to speak in public schools. The chronicle of her journey from ghetto to death camp to freedom generated hundreds of letters from children expressing their love, concern, and outrage. Those letters became the inspiration for Dear Esther. As it dissects the soul of a survivor, this moving play explores the issues of death, belief in God, revenge, hatred, justice, luck, guilt, and memory. But, although Dear Esther deals with pain and suffering, it is ultimately about hope and healing-for Esther and for everyone who confronts the tragedy of man's inhumanity to man.